Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius“Hook” Mitchell (2003). Kicked Down Reductions, 88 mins. Rebound: The Legend o f Earl “The Goat”Manigault (2004). Home Box Office, 120 mins. Through the Fire: Sebastian Telfair’s Defining Year (2004). K PN, 103 mins.
—M u r r y N e l s o n The Pennsylvania State University
These three films, all released on video at about the same time (although R ebound was produced and shown on HBO in 1996), have the same general theme: basketball is the means by which an inner-city point guard tries to escape the ghetto and reach the “prom ised land” of the National Basketball Association (NBA). All three contain cautionary lessons and sociological analyses (at different levels) o f the environments from which these men emerge (or attempt to do so). H ooked and Through the Fire nee documentaries, while R ebound is “based on a true story” and a Hollywood production with major stars. Rebound is the oldest and the least pedagogically useful of the three. It focuses on Earl “The Goat” Manigault, a playground superstar in Harlem in the mid 1960s. Hollywood sports films are notoriously uneven, and this is not a good one. The writing is hackneyed, the casting bad, and the game scenes laughable. Don Cheadle is 5’8” and never convinc ing as a ball player— Manigault was only 6’ 1 ”, but he was a strong guy, although casting Cheadles son as the young Manigault makes for nice continuity and adds to the films believabihty. The game action is so lame that one wonders how Manigault succeeded. Too bad; seeing actual footage of him would have been amazing, but in the 1960s few high school and no playground games were being filmed. Even the cameos are hokey. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says in the film that The Goat was the greatest player he ever saw, but this was scripted and Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t able to provide all the caveats (e.g., calling Manigault primarily a “playground player”) that he actually noted in a prior interview. The actor playing Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor at the time) in the film is about 6’5” or 6’ 6”, tower ing over Cheadle but not the presence who he truly was. Manigault’s exploits, first made widely known in Pete Axthelm’s The City Game, were legion but are cheapened in this rendition. H ooked is the proverbial cautionary tale, but well shot at the point where Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell, a playground legend on the courts of Oakland, is on the verge of and then is released from prison for drug charges. The film moves back to Mitchell’s youth in Oakland in the 1980s and includes footage of him in games and on the playground, dunking in amazing footage that is worth viewing just for its creativity and jaw-dropping results. There is also film of prison “championship” games, which show the high quality of the games of some of these prisoners (contrasting sharply with the believability of the game footage in Rebound). Mitchell is the central figure of the documentary, and his insights and regrets make the film painful at times. Top NBA players and former Oakland pals, Gary Payton, Antonio Davis, Jason Kidd, and Brian Shaw all agree that Mitchell was as good, if not better, than any of them, but drugs and a lack of family structure led him astray early. They also agree on what a great guy he was and is and that makes his tragedy all the more painful. Interestingly, both Mitchell and Manigault started non-profit organi zations focused on helping inner-city youth stay away from drugs and get guidance on and off the court. Their respective films end with each of them working with young boys, trying to save them from drugs and the “gang banger” environment. Through the Fire follows the exploits and decision-making of Sebastian Telfair during his senior year at Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island. This is the most focused and the best produced of the three films. Interviews with Telfair, his oldest brother (who doubles as assistant coach at Lincoln), his older brother who played at Providence but was not drafted and is playing professional ball in Turkey, his high school coach, and Rick Pitino (who had recruited him to attend Louisville) are all nicely interspersed with the day-to-day action of the games, the practices, and home life. Neighborhood young men are also interviewed and they note that there is little to do in Coney Island but play ball (or use drugs, which is implied rather than stated directly. The decisions that embody the film of Telfair’s defining year are presented through out and mirror the lives of many inner-city youth basketball stars. These deal with family, team play, individual scoring, how to avoid the pitfalls of the neighborhood such as drugs and gangs, where to go to college, and, ultimately, whether to go to college at all or “go pro.” In 2004, when Telfair graduated from high school, after leading his high school to an unprecedented three consecutive New York City championships, players could go right into the NBA without the current one-year “waiting period” that has subsequently been enacted by the NBA. Thus, Telfair’s decision was very important to him, his family, and Pitino at Louisville, where Telfair had committed for the 2004-2005 year. Telfair’s declaration that he would make himself available for the 2004 draft is also viewed from various perspectives and the result, his being drafted as the #13 pick, is sec ond-guessed by a number of critics. The result is difficult to assess. Telfair has had a steady NBA career since his drafting, but it has been as a journeyman; he has played for five NBA teams, including one team (the Timberwolves) twice. On the one hand he has “made it,” having signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar sneaker deal as well as having a continual career in the NBA. On the other, one cannot help but speculate as to the nature of his improvement had he attended college for at least a year. All of these questions and the contemporary nature of the film make it a useful candi date for consideration in a sociology of sport course or even an urban sociology course. H ooked may also have some utility for an urban sociology or sport history course, particu larly because of its shorter length, but it may be a bit too specialized. Nevertheless, both of these are useful and interesting films to recommend to students for outside, individual viewing.